books.google.com.au - This book is the first systematic account of the syntax and semantics of names. Drawing on work in onomastics, philosophy, and linguistics John Anderson examines the distribution and subcategorization of names within a framework of syntactic categories, and considers how the morphosyntactic behaviour...http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Grammar_of_Names.html?id=jo5J2XUX9EUC&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareThe Grammar of Names

The Grammar of Names

This book is the first systematic account of the syntax and semantics of names. Drawing on work in onomastics, philosophy, and linguistics John Anderson examines the distribution and subcategorization of names within a framework of syntactic categories, and considers how the morphosyntactic behaviour of names connects to their semantic roles. He argues that names occur in two basic circumstances: one involving vocatives and their use in naming predications, where they are notdefinite; the other their use as arguments of predicators, where they are definite. This division is discussed in relation to English, French, Greek, and Seri, and a range of other languages. Professor Anderson reveals that the semantic status of names, including prototypicality, is crucial tounderstanding their morphosyntax and role in derivational relationships. He shows that semantically coherent subsets of names, such as those referring to people and places, are characterized by morphosyntactic properties which may vary from language to language. His original and important investigation will appeal to scholars and advanced students of linguistics and philosophy.

References to this book

About the author (2007)

John Anderson is Emeritus Professor of English Language at the University of Edinburgh where he worked successively as a lecturer (1966-76), reader (1976-88), and professor (1988-2001). He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail. He has been a visiting professor at universities in Denmark, Poland, Greece, and Spain; and given lecture series in Italy, Belgium, Austria, the former Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Hungary. His books include The Grammar of Case (CUP, 1971); Old English Phonology (with Roger Lass, CUP, 1975); Principles of Dependency Phonology (with Colin J. Ewen, CUP, 1987); Linguistic Representation (Mouton de Gruyter, 1992); A Notional Theory of Syntactic Categories (CUP, 1997), and Modern Grammars of Case (OUP, 2006).